from the wake-up-authoritarians dept

Rep. Justin Amash has been one of the most involved and active voices in Congress on pushing back against the intelligence community's overreach and attack on our civil liberties. Many folks know him for the Amash Amendment, which would have defunded the NSA's bulk collection of phone records under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. While it was narrowly defeated, it certainly woke up many in Congress to the fact that the surveillance scandal was a real deal. Over the last year, though, we'd been hearing more and more stories about how the "mainstream Republicans" were looking to unseat Amash in the primaries. Amash is often identified as being in the "Tea Party" wing of the party, and sometimes described as more "libertarian."

The very powerful US Chamber of Commerce targeted Amash as an "easy target" to oust, arguing that his views on civil liberties put him at odds with the (many) conservative voters in his district. The primary attack on him focused heavily on Amash's support for civil liberties, directly arguing that such protection of our civil liberties meant he was "supporting terrorists." Here, for example, is a campaign ad his primary opponent Brian Ellis used against him, quoting someone referring to Amash as "Al Qaeda's best friend in Congress" and claiming Amash wanted to "shut down American intelligence for monitoring terrorists." It quotes a veteran saying: "It makes no sense. We were out there fighting for the country and he's voting against anything that would help us."

It's exactly the kind of campaign that you might expect would work in a heavily conservative, "American values" kind of district that Amash represents, if you believe in the traditional narratives and stereotypes. However, that effort failed miserably, and as Conor Friedersdorf explains, that's a good sign for civil liberties. There's this ridiculous narrative that "conservative" voters are in favor of surveillance and against protecting civil liberties, but that's always been a silly argument. Protecting civil liberties isn't "supporting terrorists," it's a fundamental concept in the Constitution and should be seen as an American value that cuts across any partisan divide.

His easy primary victory already matters because it shows that Republicans who want to rein in the NSA, repeal the Patriot Act, and close the prison at Guantanamo Bay can win a primary vote handily—even in a safe Republican district where a shameless opponent tries to portray them as siding with the enemy.

Amash's victory in the primary gives a bit of hope for civil liberties. It suggests that voters aren't the stereotypical morons that the traditional narratives often make them out to be. They can understand how protecting civil liberties should be a truly American ideal and it doesn't mean you're supporting terrorists. Earlier this year, the Republican National Committee came out against bulk surveillance by the NSA. It's increasingly becoming clear that the narrative that "Republicans have to support surveillance" is not an accurate story at all.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Keyboards are one of the fastest and most accurate ways to input text into a digital device. Sure, you could argue that speech recognition has beaten a txting champion (Ben Cook in 2006), but the more common experience with speech recognition is far from perfect dictation results. Early keyboards used some relatively complex mechanical designs to achieve a nice tactile feel and accurate input -- replaced by various iterations of keyboard improvements to become thinner and lighter and more (or less) clicky-sounding. Here are just a few more attempts to make better keyboards.

from the good-to-see dept

Wikimedia's new Transparency Report has been getting some attention, in part because it brought attention back to the whole monkey selfie copyright debacle. However, the rest of the transparency report itself is rather interesting, starting with the fact that it appears that Wikimedia rejected every request to pull down information (unrelated to copyright, which we'll get to in a second). In most transparency reports, this involves government and law enforcement requests to censor content, along with the occasional claims of defamation and whatnot. Either way, Wikimedia felt a grand total of none of them were legit:

Admittedly, takedown requests to Wikimedia are a bit different than many other sites since anyone can just go in and edit the page themselves, but such changes will often be reverted, so it's less permanent. On the copyright front, Wikimedia did agree to abide by some DMCA requests, but it does seem notable that it's well less than half of all such requests:

These days, with so many sites immediately rolling over when someone complains, it's good to see Wikimedia being willing to stand up against censorship attempts.

from the always-be-closing dept

Following one Comcast customer-retention rep's brave attempt to set the record for the most annoying cancellation call, The Verge put out a call for past and current Comcast employees to weigh in on just how rare or frowned-upon this sort of thing is. As the initial submissions noted, this sort of thing isn't so much frowned-upon as it is, oh, let's call it super-actively encouraged. So much so, in fact, that the latest confession dump on The Verge includes Comcast's employee handbook for customer retention reps, and it's exactly as infuriating as you think it is.

A current employee at Comcast who participated in the Comcast Confessions series provided The Verge with a copy of the 20-page guidelines the company uses for evaluating retention specialists. The guidelines are divided into 13 sections:

It has all the hallmarks of a playbook designed to piss off and annoy someone who wants to cancel service. Legislated courtesy followed by manufactured empathy that devolves into the assertion of the rep's dominance on the call, all leading to a close of the "save." If you're not in some kind of sales role, this list probably doesn't look familiar to you. I've been in sales all of my life, however, and this is the kind of playbook you get in a sales role at a faceless mega-corporation. Trust me, it's as frustrating for the sales person as it is for the customer. But you know what this isn't? Customer service for someone looking to cancel their damned account.

But the handbook does offer indirect advice on how to get past these Comcast retention people in the form of what "objections" cannot be resolved with some contrived buddy-talk and a "special" offer.

Save Attempt is Not Applicable in the Following Scenarios

-Customer is moving in with an existing Comcast customer (CAE must verify Comcast services active at new address) -Customer is moving to a non-Comcast area (CAE must verify by looking up zip code) -Account holder is deceased / incapacitated -Temporary / seasonal disconnect and Seasonal Suspend Plan is not available in their area -Natural disaster -Customer doesn't know what address they're moving to

So, if you're a Comcast customer looking to cancel your service, your playbook is quite clear. Once you are transferred to customer retention, you say the following: "I am cancelling my service because my home was hit by a tornado, flinging me out of the window and into an unknown address that I'll be sharing with someone who already has Comcast service. Also I'm dead."

from the freedom-to-tinker dept

Another day, another abuse of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions to stop things that have nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. As pointed out by Slashdot, the Hackaday site recently had a post about how to clone some Tektronix application modules for its MSO2000 line of oscilloscopes. The post explained a simple hack to enable the application module to do a lot more. And... in response, Tektronix sent a DMCA takedown notice demanding the entire post be taken down.

I am the Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at Test & Measurement group of companies including Tektronix, Inc.

I have been notified of a posting on the “Hack A Day” website concerning hacking of Tektronix’ copyrighted modules for use in oscilloscopes. Hacking those modules permits unauthorized access to and use of Tektronix’ copyrighted software by means of copying of Tektronix’ copyrighted code in those modules.

http://hackaday.com/2014/07/28/cloning-tektronix-application-modules/

A copy of the offending posting is attached for your reference.

The posting includes instructions for how to hack our modules and thereby violate Tektronix’ copyrights.

Tektronix has a good faith belief that there is no legal basis for this individual to provide such instructions to anyone, much less on a public forum.

I hereby submit that the above statements are true and accurate, and under penalty of perjury state that I am authorized to act on Tektronix’ behalf.

In view of the above, Tektronix demands that the posting identified above be expeditiously removed from the website.

Very Truly Yours,

Hackaday didn't remove the entire post, but did basically remove all of the details. While the takedown doesn't say so, it appears that Tektronix is likely relying on a distorted reading of the DMCA's Section 1201, which is the anti-circumvention clause. Of course, court rulings have not been kind to hardware companies looking to use Section 1201 in a similar manner, but it's doubtful that a site like Hackaday feels like getting in a legal fight with Tektronix.

And, of course, that's why the DMCA is such a dangerous and overly broad tool. It allows bullies like Tektronix to take down useful information that actually makes its own devices more useful, all because of misguided beliefs about the importance of "protecting" your "intellectual property," rather than making your products more useful and valuable to a wider audience.

from the say-what-now? dept

Australian Attorney General George Brandis seems to be working extra hard to demonstrate just how completely clueless he really is. On both copyright and surveillance, it's pretty clear that he doesn't even remotely understand the details, but is willing to go all in to support some misleading claims that someone told him. On the surveillance front, he recently claimed (incorrectly) that data retention rules are a must (and that whistleblowers should be thrown in prison). The data retention rules are getting some attention because it's pretty clear that Brandis is advocating for a massive expansion in data retention and collection for many different purposes (i.e., expanding it to cover "crime-fighting in general" as opposed to just terrorism/national security).

However, it's pretty clear that he has no idea what this all means. He gave an absolute train-wreck of a TV interview on SkyNews, trying to defend the policy, in which he claims that the metadata rules won't track your web surfing habits, but just what websites you visit -- as if that's a different thing. You can see the video here. It's quite incredible. First he claims that the telcos "already collect this data" for billing purposes, but they want to change the law because now flat rate plans mean telcos might not track this data. But then he jumps to internet metadata (which, uh, has never required tracking for billing purposes) and things get ridiculous quickly.

SkyNews host: Well, the Prime Minister today said "it's not what you're doing on the internet, it's the sites you're visiting." So will it be the sites you're visiting?

George Brandis: Well, well, it... it wouldn't extend, for example, to web surfing. So, what people are viewing on the internet is not going to be caught.

Host: So it's not the sites you're visiting.

Brandis: Well... um... what people are viewing on the internet when they web surf is not going to be caught. What will be caught is the... is the... is the, um... the web address they communicate to.

Host: Okay, so it's only the... I'm sorry... the web address? If I go to an internet site, that will be recorded and available?

Brandis: The web address... um... is... is part of the metadata.

Host: The website.

Brandis: Well, the web address. The electronic address of the website.

Host: Okay. If I go to the SkyNews website, the Australian website, a more questionable website, that will be... is that what we're talking about here?

Brandis: Well, I... b... m... m.... m... the... what you're viewing on the internet is not what we're interested in. And that's not what we're...

Host: You'll be able to see whether I've been to that website or that website or that website.

Brandis: Well, what we'll be able... what the security agencies want to know... to be retained... is the... is the electronic address of the website that the web user is visiting.

Host: So it does tell you the website.

Brandis: Well... well... it tells you the address of the website.

Host: That's the website, isn't it? It tells you what website you've been to.

Brandis: Well, when... when you visit a website you... you know, people browse from one thing to the next and... and... that browsing history won't be retained or... or... or... there won't be any capacity to access that.

Host: Excuse my confusion here, but if you are retaining the web address, you are retaining the website, aren't you?

Brandis: Well... the... every website has an electronic address, right?

Host: And that's recorded.

Brandis: And... um... whether there's a connection... when a connection is made between one computer terminal and a web address, that fact and the time of the connection, and the duration of the connection, is what we mean by metadata, in that context.

Host: I don't see the difference between that and what website I've visited.

Brandis: Well, when you go to a website, commonly, you will go from one web page to another, from one link to another to another, within that website. That's not what we're interested in.

Host: Okay. So the overarching... if I go to... SkyNews website, it'll tell that, but not necessarily the links within that that I go to?

Brandis: Yes.

I wouldn't normally include stuttering and false starts in a transcript, but in this case it seems somewhat necessary to show the level at which Brandis was clearly uncomfortable with the subject matter. The conversation then goes on to metadata for social media, and Brandis takes the easy out here saying that the rules are still being discussed. However, he does admit that metadata will be used for criminal investigations.

We've long argued that metadata is incredibly revealing, and anyone who claims it's "just metadata" has no clue what they're talking about. But here, Brandis takes that cluelessness to a new level. It's pretty clear that he is totally and completely ignorant of what he's discussing. At times it suggests he thinks that the web address doesn't reveal what you've been reading, and I thought maybe he thought that there's a real distinction between the web address and what you see on the page (which would be ridiculous). But at the end, he seems to imply that ISPs will only be asked to record the top level domain of pages you visit... which is... equally unlikely and almost certainly false. Everywhere else he says the "web address" which would be a lot more than the top level domain.

Either way, it seems abundantly clear that he doesn't understand the details, yet is pushing for legislation to make things happen when he is either completely ignorant of what it means, or he knows exactly what it means and knows that people would revolt over it, so he's trying to mislead everyone.

No matter what the truth is, he has no business setting up these rules.

from the test-cases dept

Three years ago, we wrote about the bizarre case of a monkey who apparently grabbed a photographer's camera in a national park in Indonesia and snapped a selfie (that was back before "selfie" was so common a term -- and we just called it a "self-portrait"). There were a few different shots, but the one that clearly got the most attention is this one:

As we noted when we wrote about it, it seems fairly clear that the work is in the public domain. We were idly curious about how a news licensing agency (Caters New Agency) could claim the rights to the photograph. A few days later Caters itself demanded that we take down the photo, claiming that the copyright was held by the owner of the camera, David Slater. Slater himself insisted the copyright was his. However, as we explained in fairly great detail, looking at the laws of the US, the UK (where Slater is from) and Indonesia (where the picture was taken) the image is almost certainly in the public domain, no matter how you look at it.

Under all three laws, the rules say that the work needs to be done by a person, and a monkey doesn't count. Slater, however, claims that because the camera is his, it's still his copyright. While that's what many people think copyright law says, it's not actually what copyright law says at all.

The Gloucestershire-based photographer now claims that the decision is jeopardising his income as anyone can take the image and publish it for free, without having to pay him a royalty. He complained To Wikimedia that he owned the copyright of the image, but a recent transparency report from the group, which details all the removal requests it has received, reveals that editors decided that the monkey itself actually owned the copyright because it was the one that pressed the shutter button.

Mr Slater now faces an estimated £10,000 legal bill to take the matter to court.

First, I should note that if someone thinks the monkey holds the copyright, that's incorrect as well. While it's true that, in most cases, the person who takes the pictures gets the copyright, as noted above, the laws say it needs to be a person, so monkeys don't count. The image is public domain. The "monkey holds the copyright" claim appears to be a mistake by the author of the Telegraph piece. The guy who uploaded it has directly stated that he said there was no copyright (i.e., public domain) because there was no human author.

From here, Slater tries to flip the burden of proof, and claims that the copyright is his until proven otherwise in court:

“If the monkey took it, it owns copyright, not me, that’s their basic argument. What they don’t realise is that it needs a court to decide that,” he said.

While it's true that a court would decide the final result, the burden is actually on the copyright holder. To bring a copyright claim, you first have to prove that you hold the copyright. It's not the other way around. As Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge notes, a system in which you needed a court to assert an affirmative defense would mean that no one could ever claim self-defense. That's just not how it works.

Slater also seems to believe in an odd "sweat of the brow" concept of copyright that simply isn't relevant:

“That trip cost me about £2,000 for that monkey shot. Not to mention the £5,000 of equipment I carried, the insurance, the computer stuff I used to process the images. Photography is an expensive profession that’s being encroached upon. They’re taking our livelihoods away,” he said.

The amount that the trip cost is meaningless on the copyright status of the photo. Photography is an expensive profession, but sometimes, apparently, it's so simple that... well... even a monkey can do it.

That said, the whole "jeopardizing his income" and "taking livelihoods away" lines are pretty extreme and ridiculous. This photo got Slater a tremendous amount of fame, and a chance to capitalize on that. If he wasn't so focused on a misguided legal fight against Wikimedia, why not use the photo as a calling card to get hired to do all sorts of other wildlife shots?

So why is this even an issue again at all? Well, that's partly Wikimedia's fault. It just released a transparency report, which discusses the whole monkey situation in a case study.

from the copyright-makes-you-do-silly-things dept

Last month, we wrote about how the New Zealand ISP Slingshot had started offering what it called "Global Mode" as a standard feature. The ISP realized the simple ridiculousness of geoblocking content, especially since so much content is deemed "unavailable" in New Zealand. So, in response, it basically set its services up so that it disguised where the user was coming from (not unlike many VPN services). This seemed like smart customer service. But, obviously, not everyone is thrilled with it. The local SkyTV is apparently banning ads from Slingshot if they mention Global Mode. Watch SkyTV's spokesperson totally fail to understand the issue:

Sky TV spokeswoman Kirsty Way confirmed the advertisements had been rejected because of their references to Global Mode.

"We are a business that pays people who create television so we are against any form of piracy or the undermining of intellectual property rights," she said.

Except that Global Mode is not piracy, nor does it "undermine intellectual property rights." It merely lets people use the internet in ways to access and pay for authorized content. It actually lets folks in New Zealand do things like pay for Netflix or Hulu -- which they can't do today.

Slingshot's General Manager Taryn Hamilton rightly calls this situation ridiculous, noting that rejecting the ads is "unjustified and petty." It's also fairly counterproductive, given that now Slingshot gets probably more publicity for the service without having to pay the foolish and small-minded folks at SkyTV for the pleasure.

from the yeah-that's-believable dept

We recently wrote about Keith Alexander claiming that he's worth as much as $1 million a month (actually, the number is now being lowered to $600k) because he's magically come up with a totally brand new anti-hacking concept that will have many patents. As we noted, this story raised all sorts of questions. First, if he had such a brilliant idea to stop hackers, why didn't he use it back when he was in charge of the NSA and the US Cyber Command? His answer to that was that he magically came up with it after he left office in March. Of course, if that's the case, it's difficult to see how it can be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars per month because it's a totally untested and totally brand new idea. He can't both be claiming that his years of NSA experience make it worthwhile and that this idea has nothing to do with his work at the NSA -- but he seems to be doing exactly that.

"If I retired from the Army as a brain surgeon, wouldn't it be OK for me to go into private practice and make money doing brain surgery?" he asked. "I'm a cyber guy. Can't I go to work and do cyber stuff?"

The "brain surgery" analogy is not even close to be analogous. This is more like he was the administrator of an army hospital who has now retired and says, despite never having personally done a brain surgery, he's now invented a miraculous new way to do brain surgeries so powerful people have only dreamed of them before. Naturally, most people should be skeptical of such claims.

And, of course, most actual cybersecurity folks I know don't consider Alexander to really be a "cyber guy." He's not. Yes, he managed various groups that could hack into systems, but that doesn't make him any sort of expert on cybersecurity. Just the fact that he's diving into the murky waters of "behavioral modeling" as his anti-hacking technique should raise some flags. It's an area that has been talked about a lot, but solutions haven't been any good at all.

Is it possible that Alexander has broken through on an idea that has stumped many people who actually do spend all their time hacking away at systems, looking for security holes and how to fix them? Sure. It's possible, but it's improbable. And the claims by themselves should require significant proof before they're taken seriously. As we've said for years, ideas are one thing. Execution is another, and Alexander has shown no evidence that his solution is actually any good. So why are companies paying him upwards of six figures a month? Good question. It seems unlikely that they truly believe he has found the holy anti-hacking grail. It seems more likely that they like his government connections.

from the just-release-it dept

The fight over the redactions of the CIA's torture report continue. Last week, Senator Dianne Feinstein noted that she and her staff were somewhat taken aback by the amount of redacted information when they received back the black ink-drenched copy of the executive summary to the $40 million, 6,300 page "devastating" report on the CIA's torture program prepared by the Senate Intelligence Committee. In response, James Clapper shot back that the redactions were "minimal" and over 85% of the document was free from black ink (it's not clear if he was counting the margins as well...).

Of course, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, this is just about the executive summary of the report -- which was specifically written to be published. In other words, the really "secret" stuff is in the rest of the report, but the 408 page exec summary was written with public disclosure in mind -- meaning that the Senate Intelligence Committee staffers certainly wrote it with the expectation that it would need few, if any, redactions. So the fact that large chunks of it were redacted immediately set off some alarms.

“After further review of the redacted version of the executive summary, I have concluded the redactions eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions. Until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction, the report will not be made public.

“I am sending a letter today to the president laying out a series of changes to the redactions that we believe are necessary prior to public release. The White House and the intelligence community have committed to working through these changes in good faith. This process will take some time, and the report will not be released until I am satisfied that all redactions are appropriate.

“The bottom line is that the United States must never again make the mistakes documented in this report. I believe the best way to accomplish that is to make public our thorough documentary history of the CIA’s program. That is why I believe taking our time and getting it right is so important, and I will not rush this process.”

Senator Carl Levin then came out with a much more strongly wordedcondemnation of the redactions suggesting that they were clearly designed to hide embarrassing information, which is not a legitimate reason for redactions:

“The redactions that CIA has proposed to the Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogations are totally unacceptable. Classification should be used to protect sources and methods or the disclosure of information which could compromise national security, not to avoid disclosure of improper acts or embarrassing information. But in reviewing the CIA-proposed redactions, I saw multiple instances where CIA proposes to redact information that has already been publicly disclosed in the Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse that was reviewed by the administration and authorized for release in 2009. The White House needs to take hold of this process and ensure that all information that should be declassified is declassified.”

Senator Mark Udall issued a statement in which he notes that the "strategic" redactions are used to distort the nature of what's in the report:

"While Director Clapper may be technically correct that the document has been 85 percent declassified, it is also true that strategically placed redactions can make a narrative incomprehensible and can certainly make it more difficult to understand the basis for the findings and conclusions reached in the report. I agree wholeheartedly that redactions are necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods, but the White House must work closely with this committee to reach this goal in a way that makes it possible for the public to understand what happened.

"I am committed to working with Chairman Feinstein to declassify the Senate Intelligence Committee's study to the fullest extent possible, correct the record on the CIA's brutal and ineffective detention and interrogation program, and ensure the CIA learns from its past mistakes. And in light of the importance of the work the Senate Intelligence Committee has undertaken, I believe that the chairman should take all necessary time to ensure that the redactions to the executive summary are appropriate — not merely made to cover up acts that could embarrass the agency.

"The CIA should not face its past with a redaction pen, and the White House must not allow it to do so."

All three of those Senators are well aware of what's in the report, and it appears they recognize that the black ink was being used not to protect national security or "sources and methods" but rather to hide or distort the facts of the CIA's torture program.

Net neutrality in the United States -- one of the issues around net neutrality is whether you are creating different rates or charges for different content providers.

That's the big controversy here.

You have big, wealthy media companies who might be willing to pay more and also charge more for spectrum, more bandwidth on the Internet so they can stream movies faster.

I personally, the position of my administration, as well as a lot of the companies here, is that you don’t want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to different users.

You want to leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can succeed

Again, the current proposal from the FCC would actually allow just that. Of course, prepared remarks like these are carefully scoured by White House staff, so this isn't an offhand remark. As with Harry Reid's recent statements, it's entirely possible that this statement is a public nod towards Title II reclassification -- something that Wheeler has previously suggested there wasn't enough political support for. But if powerful Senators and the President are standing behind blocking fast and slow lanes, it certainly seems like the "there isn't political support" argument is quickly disappearing.

This certainly doesn't make it a done deal by any stretch of the imagination, but there is reason to believe that Wheeler has been using this comment period to see if there really would be political support for recassification. It's increasingly looking like there is -- and it's going to be up to Wheeler to see if he's willing to be a true leader and make the right call for how to protect an open and free internet, rather than the "easy" call.

from the their-version-of-the-sims? dept

As you may or may not be aware, Thailand changes governments like we change the oil in our cars: every couple of months or three to five thousand miles, whichever comes first. As we previously covered, the latest in Thai military juntas are (surprise!) huge fans of censoring the internet while claiming they don't and taking down social media sites while claiming that they don't. The picture being drawn for the rest of the world is one of an unsteady military government whose primary unifying factor is that it really likes censoring stuff.

Thailand, which has been ruled by a military dictatorship for the past few months, has banned the video game Tropico 5 from appearing in stores, saying "some contents of the game are not appropriate for the current situation," according to publisher Kalypso Media. Tropico 5, of course, is a video game in which you can play as a military dictator, building and running your very own country in as sadistic a fashion as you'd like.

And, as we all know, subjugating millions of citizens as you laugh maniacally is for real life, not video games. The game, it would appear, hits a little too close to home for the Thai junta. After all, if citizens are allowed to play out what is essentially their government's own role, they may come to see how horrifically they're being treated and rebel. You don't want to remind those under your rule that they're under your rule, I guess.

The irony is not lost on Kalypso, the company that makes the Tropico series.

And here's Kalypso's Stefan Marcinek, also via press release: "Our distributor has been working hard to gain approval for the release, but it seems that the Board of Film and Video Censors deem some of the content too controversial for their consumers. This does sound like it could have come from one of El Presidente's own edicts from the game."

You have to think that a game mechanic was just born for Tropico 6, in which your dictatorial rule is furthered by banning video games.

from the above-the-law dept

It would be easy to assume that the European Patent Office (EPO) stands in the same relationship to the European Union as the USPTO does to the United States, but that's actually wide of the mark. The EPO is a very strange beast indeed, as its Wikipedia entry makes clear:

The premises of the European Patent Office enjoy a form of extraterritoriality. In accordance with the Protocol on Privileges and Immunities, which forms an integral part of the European Patent Convention under Article 164(1) EPC, the premises of the European Patent Organisation, and therefore those of the European Patent Office, are inviolable. The authorities of the States in which the Organisation has its premises are not authorized to enter those premises, except with the consent of the President of the European Patent Office.

Far from being some boring government office like any other, the EPO is like a mini nation-state. This curious fact has been taken as the starting point for a witty post on the IPKat blog about a little-known country, Eponia:

a small landlocked state mainly based in Munich, though it has established colonies in The Hague, Berlin, Vienna and Brussels. Few people are born in Eponia (though it is rumoured that quite a few have been conceived there); most are settlers -- though they prefer to call themselves by a less provocative term, Examiners.

Here are some details about its financial operation:

One of the most buoyant economies in Europe, Eponia enjoys a unique and apparently inexhaustible source of income: patent tourism. Pilgrims come from far and wide to place their supplications before the local sages, or Boards of Appeal. Well-wishers also ply Eponia with money in order to obtain patents, cancel patents, amend patents or sometimes just to accelerate or retard the rate at which these much-desired services are delivered. Those whose petitions for a patent are successful often find that they are blessed with plenty, and that their influence extends from one end of Europe to the other. Some say that this good fortune can persist for getting on for 20 years, so long as occasional sacred donations, quaintly termed "renewal fees", are paid. What other country in Europe can offer such attractions? The horseshoe, the four-leaf clover, the leprechaun pale into insignificance in comparison.

And let's not forget about more elevated matters:

The national religion of Eponia is contained in a document known as the European Patent Convention, whose Articles (far more numerous than the Church of England's mere 39) are held to have been dictated directly into the ear of Blessed Bob van Benthem by a divine voice in the form of a holy hummingbird. While of less mystical origin, the Rules are also greatly revered. Like any sacred text, its superficial meaning is open to misinterpretation, and only specially trained priests are initiated into the deeper meaning of its rites and rituals (enigmatically referred to as "Guidelines"). When sufficiently inspired, those who are closest to achieving spiritual ecstasy can be seen and heard to be "talking in tongues", which embrace English, German and French -- but never Spanish or Italian.

A unitary patent will be a European patent granted by the EPO under the provisions of the European Patent Convention to which unitary effect for the territory of the 25 participating states is given after grant, at the patentee's request.

The UPC will operate in relation to an upgraded framework of patents that are granted by the European Patent Office (EPO), with such patents being able to have unitary effect in all participating states (i.e. those which have approved the relevant EU Regulation). By replacing the jurisdiction of the national courts in enforcement and invalidity proceedings of such patents, the UPC will take exclusive competence to determine all disputes relating to patents with unitary effect. The new system has all the main characteristics of a federal court, apart from the name. However, although a federal structure is adopted, important elements are strikingly different. First, the EU states do not form a federation under which benefits are pursued for the common good of one state and second, there is no legislative authority to influence the economic policy which underlies the determination of the legal principles and standards that define patents as objects of property in the UPC system.

That emphasizes once more that the unitary patent system has been decoupled from the normal legislative and democratic processes of the European Union, and thus will be under no obligation to take heed of the economic interests of the European citizens. Here's why that is likely to be a problem:

There is no precedent in the political history of modern democracies where important property issues affecting the economic sustainability and development of a country, and the proprietary rights and business prospects of its people, were conclusively and exclusively taken by a judicial body at supranational level. A democratic policy-making process for the determination of patents as objects of property exists, of course, in all countries of the world, including the US, whose system the UPC tries to imitate. The difference is that the US unified patent system does not escape democratic control, and the economic policies that it serves are widely debated by legislators, judges, economists, lawyers and industry players, all of whom are residents of the same country.

It's still early days for the unitary patent and the Unified Patent Court, so it's not yet clear how the new system will work, and how serious the problems will be. The danger is that Eponia might turn out to be not so much a quaint oddity in the European political landscape as a dangerous rogue state with serious negative consequences for the region's businesses and citizens.